Knowledge through art

Sustaining culture

Graham Moore

So that house that you see at Oolong in Nowra,
that’s where I was born. On the side shed, I’ve even
seen where mum gave birth to me. Just a little, tiny place as big
as this area here. Then I was taken from there when mum, well I
was right to go, after a couple of days, lived in this little
shack. I found it when I was nineteen riding bikes. I found this
old shack, overgrown. It brought back all these memories from when
I was a kid. It’s just a blowout …, so it’s
about 35 kilometres up the Shoalhaven. And that part of the river
is called Uluuru, meaning ‘safe
place’, in our language. It’s an old traditional camping
ground. That’s on the passageway through up to Goulburn
and back around … (Interviewer: And you called the people…?)
Our people - Gurrungutti. That’s where I’m
from, Gurrungutti, nunji gurrungutti, from Yuin people. And Yuin
means ‘black people’ of this area, that’s what
it really means, and it’s called and pronounced djuwin.